


philtatos

by nebulera



Series: of beasts [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:21:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24911524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulera/pseuds/nebulera
Summary: Through passion, he gains peace.
Relationships: Darth Maul/CT-7567 | Rex
Series: of beasts [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2021009
Comments: 5
Kudos: 60





	philtatos

The Star Destroyer hovers several kilometers above the Imperial facility, towering over the base and the city and casting a harsh, demeaning shadow. Like a predator it looms, as they always do with their innate power to destroy. What once represented the Republic now transformed into a monster with oppressive canons that stares down all beneath it. With the twist of a head and demanding fingers, it became a tool for mass destruction and killing, to force whatever it wished to submit. The emergence of one makes even the bravest in the Rebellion run in the opposite direction.

Maul fears very little, and that includes the Star Destroyer that he stares at with ferocity and clenched fists. It isn’t the ship that makes his fingers shake and cause his heart to pound harshly. There’s only two people left alive in the universe that would be capable of instilling terror into his veins. And Rex is not here. He’s up there.

“Maul,” Ahsoka says from behind him. They’re hiding in a grove just before the base, right on the edge of the city. “It’s not safe here.”

“I don’t care,” Maul growls. He tears his gaze away from the nightmare to look at her. Unsurprisingly, her anger is made very transparent on her face, though it is not at Maul for once, but the situation. For the second time in his life, Maul reconciles another commonality between them and it is their captain.

“He’s in pain,” Maul says and what demeanor he’s constructed for himself drops against his will. His voice becomes weak. “Can’t you feel it?”

Ahsoka’s eyes are glossy. “Of course I can feel it,” she says, her breath faltering. “But we can’t help him from here.”

Maul disagrees. He’d sought Tano for help before he came to this conclusion, though the solution would have to be dealt alone. He needs her for something else.

Anger flows through his body like a drug. He relishes in his own misery while thinking of his dear Rex, bright as the sun. Hatred strengthened him, but there’s no doubt in his mind that love _completed_ him. The passion of both brings him the strength to do what is necessary; he’d been biding his time, building up what power he had and letting it all extend through his arms, hands, fingertips. 

Doubtless this would be a message to his old master and his puppet. 

“Walk away, Lady Tano,” Maul says. He turns to face the Star Destroyer, backing up slightly.

“Walk away? Maul—“

Darth Maul turns sharply and shoves, the air between them widening. She flies back down the street and lands with a harsh thud. He then closes his eyes and once again, faces the Star Destroyer. He vaguely hears the sound of two lightsabers igniting—he doesn’t blame her, but he hasn’t the time to explain. He needs her for after. She’d be the one to save him.

He reaches out with the Force. Lady Tano becomes frozen where she stands. He invokes the hatred he stored away in the crevices of his heart and bones—hatred for his Master and for himself. It’s nothing like when he’d just escaped the cell on the Republic Venator and tore down the hyperdrive generators—where once the mass death across the galaxy fueled him, it served nothing now. He’d split the earth open for his captain. He seeks further, probing through darkness to find Rex amidst the chaos of his mind and despite the miles between them. Once he finds him, strong but pained, Maul’s arms tense with the might of a thousand armies that stand before the Empire. His head burns while he reaches his hands out, hearing Ahsoka yell his name before he breathes and pulls.

…

  
  


Rex is strapped down with a bright light stabbing his vision. He’s woken for maybe the fourth time since his last visitor tried to pry into his head; they all seek information, especially from that of a renegade clone who’s been a thorn in the Empire’s side the last few years. If only they knew that he knows nothing at all. The Rebellion is small—they haven’t the resources for exchanging information and identities between locked comm channels. All he knows is Ahsoka and Maul, and he’d die before exposing them.

The sound of a sliding door jolts his eyes open and through the blinding light he’s greeted with the lifeless eyes of a stormtrooper’s helmet. The last person to be in here had been a naval officer—this is completely new. The trooper wears a single orange pauldron, a commander, perhaps.

Rex sighs. He would very much like to be rid of this place.

“Gonna probe me again?” he says, vehemently unafraid.

The trooper stares up at him. “No.”

That voice makes Rex freeze dead. He’s not certain this is real

“You—you’re a clone.” Rex can’t breathe. It’s been years since he’s heard a brother.

The clone hesitates, and if he had been without a helmet, Rex wonders if his eyes would have betrayed him. They sent a clone in here to break him to emotionally compromise him, and Rex wants to pummel whoever tried to do this to him. “And you’re a traitor, CT-7567.” He lands a punch to Rex’s gut and all he can do is shake in his restraints. He’s completely trapped.

He’d been so defiant against his previous captors, but being at the mercy of a brother so clearly still trapped, it pains his heart. Oh, Jesse. He died not knowing who he was.

“No,” Rex says, anguished. “The Emperor failed us. He failed our brothers, the Jedi—“

The vod brings his fist to the side of Rex’s face and tears build in his eyes.

“The Jedi _betrayed_ the Republic!”

Rex catches his breath. “You don’t fight for the Republic anymore, brother.”

“We’re not brothers.”

“Take off your helmet. We’re the same.”

“We’re not.” 

Rex hadn’t thought that his travels with Maul would have gotten him here—prisoner, but finally finding one of his vod. He isn’t going to give, and even if he could or did, he’s a dead man anyway. He’s too much of a liability.

Rex wants to ask for the clone’s number and that perhaps he’ll recognize him, or maybe he’s got a whole new number completely. He doesn’t ask. He is scared to know.

Anguish flows through him and he wishes Maul goodnight.

Before the clone can say or do anything else, a deafening bang explodes in their ears. The floor beneath them begins to sway and then the ship tips at a sharp angle. Rex’s stomach drops. 

The Star Destroyer plummets. The first few seconds, Rex braces himself for the pain and release of death, but it never comes. The restraints loosen and Rex is being thrown forward, colliding with nothing. Fire burns around him and debris crumbles down the side of an invisible cradle protection Rex. Smoke and flames fill his vision as the floor and walls give way to the base beneath them.

Rex closes his eyes. The carnage is loud in his ears, but he feels no pain.

…

  
  


He waits, not for rescue, but for his body to calm down.

There’s a clear path in front of him. Through the smoke, the debris of the crashed Destroyer forms an impossibly shaped arch being held up by nothing visible. Rex can see when it becomes troubled and falters, where pieces of debris loosen. When Rex stops shaking, he uncurls his arms from around his knees and crawls out from under the remains of his destroyed cell.

He has to wave smoke from his face in order to see and breathe. He tries not to look at the bodies, though he does end up stopping to look down at one. The clone from his last short interrogation. Rex can’t find the will to remove his helmet, afraid he might recognize the poor brother. A million different scenarios run through his head and he silently bids the clone goodbye and marches on.

Through the rubble, Ahsoka finds him. She’d been following the same path opposite Rex and they ran to embrace each other. The crash around them is all too similar to where they had been years ago after the fall of the Republic—crawling through the remnants of a Destroyer searching for their brothers—but they don’t make note of it.

“Maul—where’s Maul?”

But he knows the answer to this question. There’s only one force in the universe that would be holding the entire wreckage up like this, and Ahsoka is right in front of him. The familiarity of their surroundings becomes ironic, then. Her face grows weary. “He’s waiting for you.”

  
  


…

  
  


Maul had collapsed when he saw Rex and Ahsoka emerge from the smoke. Behind them, the entire structure that had been held up by the palm of Maul’s hand gave way when he did. They had quickly fled, Maul in Rex’s arms.

Maul’s breathing is slow. He’s resting in bed, Rex sitting beside him with his hand against his forehead, running his thumb over his temple. He’s still warm, only deep in slumber.

“He wouldn’t let me help him,” Ahsoka had said.

“How could he...” Rex trailed off. He’d pulled the Star Destroyer out of the sky. He couldn’t fathom even General Skywalker pulling off such a massive feat. 

“At least I know why,” Ahsoka said, an edge of fondness in her tone, though it was gone rather quickly. She still didn’t like Maul very much. “He couldn’t do it again. The force of it would kill him.”

Rex now waits at his bedside for Maul to wake, though he’s long gone from exhaustion, and Rex thanks the Force he didn’t fall into a coma. 

Years of undercover sabotage and rebel networking couldn’t amount to the first real blow against the Empire. Maul had single-handedly destroyed an Imperial Star Destroyer and base all to save Rex. He loved him, but he could never predict him.

It’s not the first time and certainly not the last that Rex ponders the powers of Force wielders—Maul had destroyed a Venator before, but from the inside, and it was only to save himself. Now, it wasn’t the same. He had the ability to snap Rex in half when he willed it, but that strength is not exclusive to the Jedi. Their powers unhinged left even the most powerful in the galaxy fall to their knees, but Rex has held him, has cradled and sought to protect him the way Maul protected him. If only he knew Rex would move mountains for him, too.

He lifts Maul’s hand to press a light kiss against it and just holds on. “Fool,” he says. “What am I going to do with you?”

**Author's Note:**

> if starkiller could do it...


End file.
